Green Eyes

by Phil Hartman

3/16/85: Jamaica Bay, New York City: 07:00 hrs EST:

Do I care ?

Very damn good question, I guess. Last time I felt this empty was when ...

When you were lying in a hospital bed up the way, actually, soaked with radiation and I couldn't do a thing.

Ashes. Instant cremation.

Logic can tell me every reason why you did it. Logic can tell me every point, every necessity.

But I can recite battle plans and ideas until I turn blue. The ache is still there.

Alcohol ? Logan's recourse.

A new woman ? Warren's recourse.

Laughter ? Kurt's recourse.

"Recourse" - I AM turning blue, sounding like Hank....

I'm EMPTY. Not "grab-a-bite" empty, but "oh-dear-my-intestines-are-on-the-floor" empty.

My heart is in little pieces empty.

I can shatter steel with a glance, I can lead a small army into battle, and I can't do this.

I love you. I miss you.

Hate you ... no, the poets and dime-store novelists are wrong on that score. No one who knew you could hate you for choosing what you did. That was your need, your choice ...

I look at the ring. Diamond; I saved and saved for it, using the little "mad money" allowance the Professor gave us. Real diamond.

I want to throw it so far.

I can't.

I must.

I -

Fire. Like hair.

Like burning, hunger, agony, screams -

White. Crushed, drained, slinking away.

Black, leather, lust, a laughing, false little man.

Red. Eyes, love, reminding.

Sealed away, tomb, QUIET -

Scream-shriek.

Wings dulled, stretch, fire and water mixing, mixing, rising, gasping -

- I am FIRE, not a duck -

- I can feel you, knowing, red on red, sight on sight
-

and there you are, falling, something sparkling with you -

- and I catch you, remembering what SHE did, me yet not me, liar, harlot -

- and I hold you.

And you hold me.

It isn't a dream.

Whatever else it is, it's real - we're in some cheap, sorry little Bronx flophouse, last of my money spent on the rent, but for now it'll work.

She's stretched out beside me, asleep; the remains of her clothes drying on the radiator, mine tossed about.

"Fearless" getting careless. I DON'T care - not about the little things, not now, not when I owe her total and utter attention, after all I let happen.

~Scott. Stop. Angsting.~

I stop.

It's weak, yet - her telekinesis is stronger than ever before, her telepathy still returning as if in some balance - but it's there. Her fire.

I can feel her anger - not at me, I selfishly think "thank God" for that - and it's a righteous anger, a deserved anger, for what the Phoenix kept us from, for what we lost ...

And what we have.

I was mad at him, until the mad rolling burned it out of me. I can't stay mad at him - after all, he thought she was me.

Weird flattery, really - it's not like she WAS another woman ...

It's just that it should have been me.

But if it hadn't been HER, the M'Kraan would have cracked, the universe would be destroyed, and it would all be moot, now wouldn't it ?

And I think I appreciate him more. Before - before I knew how he felt, on a conscious level - he was the strong, unapproachable one. Then, the scared little boy, soldier mask on.

Now ?

Now he's the man. The whole man - the angsting is still there, but braised away by fire, by losing me once.

Not again. I won't lose him, either.

I can smell it, though. In me.

That scorched scent.

The power's lurking. It wants through, into me, out again -

- but I say no. And it's easy, so easy, to push the bird away, just a hummingbird with hot breath, not the bird of prey it was.

No, there's a much larger falconer to whom I'm coming home. Not a master - a partner.

He lets me fly, after all. And I keep coming back.

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